


We Have Got to Stop Meeting Like This

by radioactivesaltghoul



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Angst and Humor, Canon Compliant, Cockblocked By The Force, F/M, Force Bond (Star Wars), Force Ghosts, Happy Ending, No Pregnancy, Post-Canon Fix-It, Post-Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, Thirsty Ben Solo, Thirsty Rey (Star Wars), don't tell me that's not how the force works, tfw you’re annoyed that your partner won’t stop sacrificing themself for you
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-02
Updated: 2020-06-27
Packaged: 2021-02-24 15:26:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 17,679
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21980131
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/radioactivesaltghoul/pseuds/radioactivesaltghoul
Summary: Post-TROSRey and Ben will stop at nothing to save each other, passing life force back and forth like it’s a game of hot space potato as they follow each other around the galaxy.
Relationships: Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 96
Kudos: 190
Collections: TROS Reylo Fix-it Fics





	1. Tatooine

**Author's Note:**

> *tosses fic onto the ever-growing pile of tros salt*
> 
> i've never claimed to be subtle and i do not intend to start now.

Rey is staring into a Tatooine sunset the first time it happens.

After burying Luke and Leia’s lightsabers, she decides to linger on the homeworld of Luke and Anakin Skywalker. Now that she’s laid to rest the weapons of her mentors, she’s not sure what to do next.

The Resistance—well, former Resistance now; they’re the New Republic again—is rebuilding itself once again. The Final Order was completely decimated after Palpatine’s final death, but there are some lingering pockets of the First Order. Without leadership, however, they’re lost, and a number of them surrender to the New Republic with surprising ease. It turns out that there are a lot of people in the First Order who prioritize staying alive over being the dominant power in the galaxy, and most of the ones who felt differently joined the Final Order before it was destroyed.

Rey’s role in the restoration of peace in the galaxy has been unclear to everyone, including Rey. “We could use your help out there,” Poe had pointed out when she was preparing to journey to Tatooine. He’d made no secret of his desire to form some sort of friendship triad between himself, Finn, and Rey, although she’s starting to feel more and more like a third wheel. Besides, Finn and Rose seem to be getting close again, and Rey doesn’t want to hang out with Poe without either of them around as a buffer.

“Probably,” she’d replied, forcing herself to smile. “But there’s someplace else I need to be.” Something in her tone must have stopped Poe from arguing further, because he held up his hands in mock surrender and didn’t say anything else on the topic, aside from reminding her that she always has a place with them. It’s a nice sentiment, but it isn’t what she needs right now.

To Rey’s surprise, she didn’t even have to say anything about it to Finn. “I know,” he’d said, smiling at her when she showed up at his apartment on her way off of Chandrila, bag packed and BB-8 rolling around at her side. Rey hadn’t figured out exactly what she was going to say to him, and she was relieved that she didn’t have to think of how to explain it just yet.

“You know,” Rey had said, “you never told me whatever you wanted to say on Pasaana.” Finn hasn’t shown any sign of continuing that conversation since the victory on Exegol a month prior, and even though Rey has been completely wrapped up in her own grief, she hasn’t completely forgotten about it. She suspects that it has something to do with his and Poe’s relationship, given his evasion to discussing it while the pilot was around.

“I’ll tell you when you get back,” Finn had said, pulling her into a hug. She still hasn’t discussed the details of what happened on Exegol; it’s too raw and fresh to even say the words aloud. “Go take care of whatever it is that you need to do.” And that is why Finn is one of her best friends: he doesn’t make her feel like she needs to explain anything to him.

Rose had been her final stop before leaving. Rose, who has been an absolute rock these last few weeks, making it clear that she’s ready to listen whenever Rey is ready to talk while also making Rey feel like there’s no pressure to spill all of her thoughts and feelings over a round of drinks. The mechanic gets how comforting it is to sit and tinker with machines all day, and even though she was sidelined on the quest to find the Sith Wayfinder, she has still had plenty of adventures with Rey, Finn, and Poe. “I hope you find what you’re looking for,” Rose had whispered when she’d hugged Rey good-bye. “You’ll always be welcomed back here.”

It’s been a week since then, and she’s still on Tatooine, unsure of what she’s looking for. There’s a sense, a voice telling her that it’s not time for her to go just yet. But then again, lately it’s been difficult to figure out what’s the Force and what’s just Rey’s own thoughts and feelings.

Thoughts and feelings she doesn’t particularly want to sit with.

There’s a rawness in her that she’s never experienced before, not even when her parents left her behind on Jakku. A piece of her is missing, and she’s not sure how to get it back. And despite how relieved she is that the war is won, she can’t shake the grief that has been following her around since Ben’s death. It’s an agonizing roll of emotions, and she doesn’t know how to make it stop.

It goes in cycles: comfort in the fact that they’re no longer fighting. Anger that he’s gone and left her alone again. Joy in the kiss they’d shared. Frustration that she’s unable to conjure his Force ghost. And through it all, extreme sexual frustration. Rinse, repeat.

So, for lack of better ideas, she’s staying on Tatooine, where it all began. The Lars homestead has been abandoned since the death of Luke’s aunt and uncle, and Rey has found that as long as she keeps busy with anything other than Jedi training, she can ignore the hurt enough to function. The action of unburying old things from sand and fixing them up is so familiar that it’s comforting, and she finds herself wondering if she should just give up on the Force and become an old hermit living out in the desert. She can’t bring herself to cut herself off from the Force completely, however; there’s a stubborn part of her that refuses to lose hope that Ben is still out there somewhere, and she’ll never find him without the Force.

Today is not much different from the previous days have been, except that she uncovered a model ship in a room full of old work equipment. The scavenger in her wanted to set the toy aside, recognizing its lack of tradeable value, but she picked it up anyway. It’s strangely endearing to think of Master Luke as a kid, fantasizing about being a pilot.

She’s brought the toy outside to sit next to her while she eats dinner with the twin suns low in the sky. The more things change, the more they stay the same, she supposes. All that work and personal growth just to sit outside and eat dinner alone in the desert.

So much for found family. What a load of banthashit.

She puts her bowl down on her lap, letting her mind wander. She’s pored over the old Jedi texts a thousand times, searching for a way to bring Ben back. No answer there, but maybe she needs to start looking elsewhere. She’s heard that Dagobah is an entire Force-sensitive planet. Maybe that should be her next stop. But no, if she were to find the legendary Master Yoda’s Force ghost, she wouldn’t have to go looking on Dagobah, would she?

“You’re telling me, out of all the planets in the galaxy, you decided to settle down _here_?” The sound of someone else speaking jolts her out of her musings. It’s so jarring that it takes her a moment to register whose voice it is.

Rey’s dreaming. She must be. She’s officially hit that point where you want something so badly, you start to hallucinate. Because there’s no way that she’s actually hearing Ben tease her about her current surroundings.

She doesn’t see any harm in talking to a hallucination; after all, she’s all alone out here in the desert, and it wouldn’t be the first time she made up an imaginary friend to keep her company. “I wasn’t sure where else to go,” she tells the hallucination.

To her surprise, the voice responds. “I can’t believe you’d willingly hang around another desert, especially this one. I’ve felt your joy at seeing greenery for the first time.”

“Yes, well, it felt more symbolic to come here instead of—” She stops short when she actually looks away from the binary sunset and sees Ben standing there, smiling at her. “You’re not really here,” she whispers, scrambling to her feet.

Ben looks down, presumably taking stock of his new Force ghost appearance. He looks exactly as he did the last time she saw him—covered in blood, grime, and soot—aside from being blue-tinted and transparent. “Yes and no,” he says, looking back up at her. “I’m still trying to figure out how it works, becoming one with the Force.” _Coming back to you,_ his expression says.

Rey’s thoughts and feelings are spinning so hard that her brain stops working. All she can do is stare at Ben’s Force ghost, trying to figure out what to do or say first. There are a million things she wants to say to him, and she has no way of knowing if she’ll be able to say them all before he disappears again. Unfortunately, the first thing that comes out of her mouth is, “You _asshole._ I can’t believe you sacrificed yourself for me.”

Ben’s blue-tinted expression jumps from happy to embarrassed to angry almost faster than Rey can keep up with. “Sorry for wanting to save your life after you died to save the entire galaxy,” he snaps. “No, wait. I’m not sorry. I’d do it again in a heartbeat.”

This is not at all how Rey had pictured her first conversation with Ben after making contact through the Force. Whoops. They’re glaring at each other now; they both still find it easier to get angry instead of emotional. It’s difficult to develop healthy coping mechanism when your upbringing is as problematic as theirs have been. “I come from a worse bloodline than you do. The galaxy needs Skywalkers more than it needs Palpatines.”

For some reason, Ben smirks at that. It’s an expression that’s a lot more welcome than his glare, and Rey’s glad that they’ve already moved on from arguing. “Is that why you’ve taken to calling yourself Rey Skywalker?”

Rey is baffled by the comment until she realizes that Force ghosts must gossip. What a weird idea. “It beats ‘Rey Nobody’.” What she means is _It could have been Rey Solo_ , but she doesn’t particularly want to discuss that could-have-been right now. It seems a bit rude to point out that she’s unable to get married to a Force ghost after he became one to save her.

“I digress,” Ben says. “You were never ‘Nobody’. Not to me.”

And that is the line that does her in. At least she was able to tell him that she’d wanted to take his hand on the _Supremacy,_ despite how botched his attempt at a proposal was. In retrospect, she finds that offer oddly endearing.

She sinks back down to the ground, looking back out at the horizon. The suns have almost set. She’ll need to lock up for the night soon, but she’s afraid that Ben will disappear again forever if she moves. “No more of your big dramatic gestures, please,” she says quietly.

“Big dramatic gestures?” He sounds amused, and his voice is closer than it was before. When she looks over at him, he’s sitting on the ground next to her, close enough to touch. Huh. Force ghosts can speak, but their movements are completely silent. That’s disconcerting.

“Offering me the galaxy?” she points out. “Sacrificing yourself for me? Can’t you just, I don’t know, buy me dinner?” She’s no expert, but she’s gathered that dinner is a popular date idea on many worlds.

“Where would be the fun in that?” he asks lightly.

“I used to crawl through old Star Destroyers looking for parts to bring in an ever-decreasing number of portions,” she replies, but the words have no heat. “Food is very fun for me.”

“Fair point.”

She doesn’t even think about the possibility that he might not be fully corporeal when she leans into him, and yet she’s still shocked when she doesn’t simply fall over. Okay. So she can touch Ben’s Force ghost.

Oh. Wait. This offers a _lot_ of possibilities.

Before she can think too hard about the physics of making out with the ghost of her idiotic self-sacrificing partner, she tilts her head to the side and captures his lips with hers. It’s just as thrilling as it was on Exegol, although this kiss is tinged with a bittersweetness that wasn’t there before.

And that sparks an idea. Surely, if they’re a Force dyad, she can use her life force to bring him back to life? She’s no longer dying from overexertion, so she has enough energy to pull this off. Right?

You never know until you try, Rey reasons. And what better way to try to breathe life back into someone than to kiss them so hard they come back to life? Well, the kissing might not be necessary, but she doesn’t think he’s going to complain about that part of the process.

She places one hand on Ben’s chest, letting it rest right over his heart. It’s unnerving that she can’t actually feel his heartbeat, but that’s what she gets for making out with a ghost, she supposes. And then she focuses, and _pushes_.

The power transfer latches on immediately. Ben jolts, realizing what Rey’s trying to do. “No,” he says, trying to pull out of her reach. “Rey, I won’t let you do this.”

“Try and stop me,” she challenges before tackling him. It’s a bit awkward, given that they were both already sitting on the ground; nevertheless, she manages to wrestle him down to the ground so that she winds up straddling him. “Trust me,” she says through gritted teeth.

“Don’t be stupid, Rey,” he snarls, but it’s too late. She’s already giving him everything she’s got. The fact that she’s now sitting on his lap, hands pressed to his chest, must be what’s keeping him from shoving her away. It’s definitely not a bad place to be.

Again: being able to touch a Force ghost offers a _lot_ of possibilities.

Rey would be more than happy to experiment if she wasn’t so set on bringing him back to life. She refuses to spend the rest of her life alone, pondering the physics of Force ghost sex as she wonders if this will be the last time she sees him. “Tit for tat, Ben.”

There’s a shift in the air, ever so subtle, and then Rey is fading into nothingness, leaving behind a pile of clothing lying on the chest of a naked and now-living Ben Solo.

“Well,” Ben says, staring at Rey’s clothes. “Fuck.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i am endlessly entertained at both the thought of rey and ben chasing each other around the galaxy trying to un-force ghost each other and the fact that canon no longer matters so i can make up whatever i want to about force ghost rules. they'll get a happy ending here, don't worry.


	2. Jakku

Ben can’t say which is more shocking, finding out that the love of his life has become a Force ghost in his place, or realizing that becoming corporeal again means waking up on Tatooine completely naked. Which makes sense, he realizes as he takes stock of the pile of clothing that Rey left behind. If people don’t take their clothing with them when they become Force ghosts, they won’t have their clothing when they un-Force-ghost themselves.

“Dammit, Rey!” he shouts at the darkening sky around him. He doesn’t know much about Tatooine, but he knows it’s not safe to be outside after dark. He pushes himself to his feet, cursing some more as he realizes that sand really does get _everywhere._ Which leads to his next step, “Stop being naked in the desert.” Rey’s clothing isn’t going to fit Ben, but he’s not sure what other options he has. Maybe there’s a blanket somewhere in whatever she’s been sleeping in.

Ben has never been to the abandoned Lars homestead before. It held no significance for either of his parents, and Luke never expressed any desire to return, as far as Ben is aware. It’s strange that Rey felt this was a good place to go while she tried to figure out what to do next, although he can’t help but wonder if the significance of this planet has anything to do with the fact that he was finally able to manifest to her as a Force ghost. 

It’s not as if there’s a field guide to becoming one with the Force. Unfortunately.

There’s a ship nearby; Ben assumes that she’s been sleeping there and not in the sand-filled dwelling that his uncle grew up in, so he makes a beeline for the ship in hopes that he’ll find something to wear on board.

The thing that strikes him first is that the interior of the ship smells like Rey. He wasn’t aware that he’d picked up on what she smells like until just now. It hits him like a blow to the gut that he’s here and she’s now wherever it is that Force ghosts go when they’re not manifesting. He’s equal parts comforted and annoyed that she’s just as willing to sacrifice herself for him as he is for her, although that’s probably what happens when you share a soul and a braincell.

He’s rooting around in Rey’s storage when his eye catches on a folded pile of black clothing. Oh. So that’s what happened to his clothes after he became one with the Force. He’s a little surprised that Rey is sentimental enough to hold on to them. Has she been wearing them? Kriff, he’d love to see her wearing nothing but his shirt, as cliche as that is.

_Focus,_ he reminds himself. _We have a scavenger to find._

Once he’s dressed in clothes that have definitely _not_ been washed since he last wore it in the middle of a battle (leading him to wonder what exactly it is that Rey has been doing with his clothing), he charts a course for someplace he hopes will bring Rey’s Force ghost out to meet him. He still has the coordinates for Niima Outpost memorized; at one point in his hunt for Rey, he’d considered looking there for her before realizing that she had no reason to go back to her homeworld.

The ride from Tatooine is long enough for him to sleep, throw his and Rey’s clothing through a sonic wash, and catch up on the news. He’s surprised to learn that it’s only been a few weeks since he died. Time has no meaning when you’re one with the Force, so he had no way of knowing the date when he manifested to Rey. He’s pleased that it didn’t take long for them to find each other. Hopefully, that means he’ll find her just as quickly, if not moreso.

On Jakku, Ben has the unfortunate experience of meeting Unkar Plutt. “You’re looking for Rey?” the Crolute sneers. “Girl disappeared long ago. Stole my ship, too.”

Ben has to bite his tongue to remind him who the _Millennium Falcon_ really belongs to. Instead, he says, “Do you know where she was living?”

Plutt shrugs. “She had her own place out in the desert. I don’t know anything more about it than that. I doubt you’ll find anything out here.” He’s eyeing Ben in a way that makes it obvious that he’s holding back some questions, but Ben doesn’t want to waste any more time. He knows Rey was living in the skeleton of an old AT-AT; he just doesn’t know where it is. And, because sand gets everywhere, it’s possible that the structure has been reclaimed by the desert.

Well, shit. Ben’s tried meditating to search for her in the Force, but he’s running into the same problem that she probably was: there’s nothing there other than a gaping psychic wound. Hell, he’s been impaled by a lightsaber and even that hurt less than this. It’s making him understand why Rey went to such lengths to get him back.

He’s not going to find it wandering around on foot, so he takes Rey’s ship and flies low enough to see any structures that might be laying on the ground, circling wider and wider as he searches in what he thinks is a reasonable radius for a speeder’s ride into town. The only place he won’t venture near is the remains of Tuanul; he’s not ready to think about that night. Kylo Ren may be dead, but Ben Solo still carries the weight of his actions.

Fortunately—or unfortunately, depending on the way you look at it—his urgency to draw Rey’s Force ghost out is stronger than the pull of the well of guilt he feels about any of his past actions. Rey first; atonement later.

He stops at three potential wreckages before he finds Rey’s old AT-AT. He’s seen it in her memories, but it’s a completely different experience to see it in real life. Not to mention, he’s bigger than Rey, which means he keeps hitting his head on the structure as he crawls his way inside because he’s feeling her muscle memory. It’s yet another strange side effect of the bond they share.

He refuses to put _share_ in the past tense.

Ben has seen the inside of an AT-AT walker before, but he’s never seen one that’s been completely stripped for parts like this one has. Whether that was Rey’s doing or another scavenger once they realized she was never coming back to Jakku, he doesn’t know.

He pauses when he sees the wall of marks she’d made. One for every day that she waited for parents that were never coming back. Even if their decision to sell their daughter into slavery was made in an effort to hide her from Palpatine, it was an incredibly shitty thing to do. All it meant was that she suffered alone in the desert for fifteen years, and Palpatine found her anyway in the end.

What a load of banthashit.

“Okay, Rey,” he murmurs to the structure around him. “Where are you hiding?” When no one responds, he goes back to his exploration of her life as a scavenger. There’s nothing left of tradeable value, confirming his suspicion that someone has raided Rey’s old home in the year since she left, but there are a few sentimental knickknacks lying around.

A small, handmade doll wearing an orange Rebellion pilot uniform catches his eye, and there’s a dirty helmet that he knows belonged to Dosmit Ræh lying nearby. Rey used to make up adventures about Ræh’s time with the Rebellion, he knows. Ben wonders what Rey would say about it now that she’s been a part of another rebellion.

He focuses on that, hoping that the emotional significance will help him connect to Rey. He’s not entirely certain what finally made him manifest to her on Tatooine, but he suspects it’s the significance of Tatooine to the Skywalker family drama.

Of course, the significance is merely “where Shmi and Anakin were slaves” and “where Luke was raised by his father’s stepbrother who actively tried to prevent him from doing anything but becoming a moisture farmer,” but it’s not like she can go to Alderaan.

* * *

Meditating on Rey’s old toys doesn’t work.

Kylo Ren may be dead, but Ben Solo still doesn’t have the best distress tolerance. Rather than attempting to punch a hole through the wall of Rey’s former home, Ben stomps around in the sand, screaming obscenities at the Force until his throat is ragged, at which point he stomps back onto the ship to get out of the sun and sand.

He spends the next seven days camped out at Rey’s old home, attempting to meditate hard enough to will her into manifesting. Ben’s never been great at meditation, but he’s desperate to find Rey. The hurt that he feels at losing her hasn’t dulled; if anything, it’s gotten worse. Even in the year following Crait, when they were desperately trying to shut each other out, at least she was _there._

It’s only when he runs through the last of Rey’s food and water stores that he realizes he can’t wait out in the desert forever. How the hell did Rey do this for fifteen years? It’s only been a week and he’s already losing his mind.

He prepares to trudge back to Niima Outpost to restock his food and water stores, belatedly realizing that he has no credits. He feels bad using Rey’s, but then again, even if he hadn’t become a Force ghost, he wouldn’t have been rolling in credits anyway. What money he’d had in the First Order is long gone, which is what happens when your army is absorbed by a bigger army that is then defeated by a group of scrappy rebels.

Still, he’s gotta eat, and he doesn't think Rey of all people will fault him for buying food. He needs that strength in order to bring her back, anyway.

Out of all of the things in the galaxy, this is apparently what makes her Force ghost decide to manifest. "Did you steal my ship?" is the first thing out of her mouth.

"Rey." He's so relieved to see her (and, if he's being honest, proud of himself for being able to reach her mere days after she became a Force ghost in his place). "Why were you hanging on to my clothes?"

He learns that Force ghosts are capable of blushing as Rey's blue-tinged cheeks become even bluer. "I don't want to talk about it."

Okay, now he _really_ wants to know what she was doing with his clothing.

"Fine," he says, wanting to hurry this along to the point where he can use the power of their Force dyad to bring her back. He's pretty sure they have to be touching for it to work, although he thinks that it's safe to admit at this point that they just really want to put their hands all over each other. There are a lot of places he wants to touch Rey, but he's not entirely certain that now is the right time. Better to wait until they're both alive again. "Come here."

"Why?" She sounds defensive. Maybe she's embarrassed about the clothes thing.

"Because I want to kiss you again, that's why." He's fairly certain that Trudgen Ren once said that chicks don't like it when you come right out and say things like that, but fuck that guy.

Rey seems to appreciate Ben's directness, because her entire posture relaxes. "I came all this way through the Force, and all you want to do is kiss me?"

"Well, no I—"

"I mean, we could be doing more than kissing. There are a lot of things I've thought about doing to you."

_Fuck_. He needs to focus. He hasn't spent the last seven years avoiding the seduction of the light only to be ruled by his dick as his Force ghost girlfriend makes a move on him.

Girlfriend. Wait, they've never discussed— _Not important right now,_ he reminds himself. "You're not concerned that you're now a Force ghost and I'm alive?"

"This is fine," she says, waving a hand like there's nothing wrong with the fact that one of them is dead. "We can still touch, and you're alive. Those are my two biggest concerns at the moment."

Of course, this is the same woman who spent fifteen years telling herself that her dead parents were coming back for her, so maybe a different approach is needed. He’s just not sure what that approach is. "Rey..."

“You’re alive. The last Skywalker. That’s what the galaxy needs.” She means every word she’s saying, which just makes them that much more difficult to hear. Damn.

“Hey,” he says, reaching out to pull her in and hold her. Despite the fact that he was the Force ghost half of this situation the last time they tried it, he’s still surprised that he’s able to touch her. He swears he feels little shocks like static electricity where they’re touching, although he has no way to know if that’s because she’s a Force ghost or if this is how it feels to touch Rey when they’re not all hopped up on adrenaline in the middle of a battle. “The galaxy needs you, too. _I_ need you.”

She practically melts into his embrace. It happens so suddenly that there’s a moment where Ben panics that she’s gone back to the netherworld of the Force. But no, she’s still there, thank the stars. This could be his only shot, and he refuses to spend the rest of his life wandering around the galaxy without Rey by his side. _Alive._ “This is banthashit,” she mumbles into his chest.

“Yeah. It is.” Okay, so he’s only done this once, and he’s not entirely certain that it will work if he’s not, like, leaning over her dying body with his hands on her stomach. But she’s so relaxed like this and he has a feeling that she’s going to fight him if she realizes that he’s trying to sacrifice himself for her again.

Except that he’s not actually trying to sacrifice himself; he’s trying to bring balance to the Force by pulling her back into the land of the living. Their story isn’t done yet. He feels that in his bones. It’s just a matter of figuring out how to pull her back without killing himself in the process.

Right. He can do this.

He wraps his arms around her, marveling at the fact that he can’t feel her heart pounding. That’s something he’d like to feel. He’ll be a lot more reassured once she’s properly alive again.

He does his best to ground himself, given the circumstances. Rey is not helping; she’s now running her hands along the planes of his stomach and _oh_ he wasn’t aware of how sensitive his neck was until Rey put her tongue on it just now. Fuck. They _really_ need to be alive together.

_Focus,_ he tells himself for what feels like the millionth time. He can’t afford to get distracted by the woman who most certainly did not learn these moves from any Jedi texts. Once he’s about as grounded as he thinks he’s going to get while Rey is making it very clear that yes, she wants a _lot_ more than kissing right now, he focuses on her life force and pushes some of his into her.

It’s easier than it was before, probably because he hasn’t just crawled up a cliff. The energy flows between them, and there’s a glorious moment when he thinks it’s going to work before he feels himself fading into the netherworld of the Force again, leaving Rey alone on her ship.

“That asshole did it again,” she seethes, scrambling to find her clothing. “I’m going to get him back for that.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> what do you guys think rey did with ben’s clothing after he became a force ghost? my money’s on “that thing that people do when they don't return their ex's clothing after a breakup and wear it while moping around the house totally heartbroken.”


	3. Corellia

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> @ everyone leaving comments: i love and appreciate each one and i promise i will respond when my life stops being so chaotic! reading your feedback on my salty tros fic makes me so happy and it means a lot to me that you're taking the time to let me know what you think <3

It turns out that getting Ben back for turning himself into a Force ghost for her again is less easy than Rey had anticipated it being. Now that they’ve both had the experience of being one with the Force, it seems like they should have an easier time finding each other. Right?

Except that it isn’t, because she feels even more lost and confused than she had before. Knowing he was alive again was good enough for her. Why couldn’t he just let her stay dead in his place?

Rey sighs. She knows the answer to that, because it’s the same thing he’s thinking about her. 

Somehow, it occurs to her that maybe she’ll find answers on Corellia. There have been no answers from any of the Skywalkers. She's tried to find Luke or Leia in the Force, but she hasn't seen them since that moment on Tatooine. Since she can't find the answers she's looking for there, maybe there's something to be found on the Solo side of the family.

Plus, she's always been a little curious about Han's childhood.

She's never been here, but as she lands her ship in Coronet City, she finds herself wondering about Han's life here, which inevitably leads her to wonder if he ever brought Ben here. She's a little surprised that that line of thought isn't enough to conjure Ben's Force ghost. Han was always a sensitive topic for him. There wasn't time to discuss it—there's never been enough time for anything with Ben—but she felt it when he gained closure about Han's death. It was...not peaceful, exactly; both of their emotions were too turbulent at the time for anything even remotely peaceful. But it was acceptance, and it was reassuring. She felt the death of Kylo Ren, and unlike the death of Ben Solo, it felt like something had come to rest.

She wishes she'd found old logs or journals or something of Han's at some point while she was living on the Millennium Falcon. She could probably comm Chewie and ask him about Han, but she's not ready to talk to one of her friends, and she's not sure Chewie is ready to talk about any of the humans he'd loved, either. Leia had told her some stories about Han during the months that she'd trained Rey using skills that no one had been aware that the general had even known, but she'd met Han long after he'd left his homeworld.

Rey wanders through the city as though she'll be able to sense where she's meant to go. But the Force isn't guiding her, not like it has in the past. It's frustratingly vague, but as Rey walks through the streets, watching the citizens rebuild after the First Order occupation, she starts to let her mind wander.

She eventually makes her way into a cantina; she's hungry and there's an enticing aroma wafting out of it. Rey doesn't have much money, but she has enough for a bowl of stew and a plate of frites. She'll have to find work soon, although she's at a loss for what kind of work she could do. _Scavenging?_ a little voice in her head asks.

Rey snorts. There's no way she can go back to that sort of life. Not after everything she's seen. But she's not sure how useful a single Jedi would be for any other odd job she could find. She sure isn't ready to run a Force training program of her own, that's for damn sure.

In the end, she takes a temporary job helping to rebuild medical droids. She likes the return to mechanic work; it makes her want to comm Rose and tell her about the droids she's helping to rebuild. Nobody recognizes her as a Jedi or Resistance hero, which is fine by her. The job isn't leading her any closer to Ben, but as the days go on, she doesn't lose hope that she'll find him here somewhere.

The work only lasts two weeks, but Rey isn't ready to move on from Corellia when it’s done. She decides to get out of Coronet City for a little while, even though she's not sure there's anywhere else on the planet that has emotional significance for either Han or Ben. The city rests as the base of a range of mountains; the day after her mechanic job ends, she gets back on her ship and flies out to the mountains. It's a novel climate for her, especially after the time she'd spent wandering around Tatooine.

There's no place to land her ship on any of the peaks, so she lands a little lower of one of them and prepares to hike to the top. Maybe she needs to spend more time in nature. She's not sure if Force ghosts will show up when there are other beings around. It didn't stop the Force bond from connecting her and Ben, but maybe Force ghost rules are different.

She'd probably enjoy exploring the boundaries of that more if Ben weren't dead. Another reason to bring him back, she thinks. Maybe becoming Force ghosts and then being brought back to life a couple of times will change their connection.

She hikes up to the top of the peak and looks down at the city miles away. From here, it doesn't look nearly as damaged by war. Corellia was heavily occupied by the First Order during the war, but ships are still being made, and citizens are rebuilding. The fact that the First Order had a heavy presence here is clear.

Did Ben have any say in that? She can't figure out if Han's homeworld would make it more or less appetizing as a planet to take control of.

An hour passes, then another. It's starting to get dark, but Rey doesn't want to move just yet. The anonymity of being in a city was nice, but there's a peacefulness out here that she couldn't find amongst the crowds. She's just about to stand up and head back down the mountain when she hears her name.

Her head whips around in her desperation to see Ben again. "Where are you?" he asks, looking at the mountains around him.

"You don't recognize it?"

He frowns. "Should I?"

"I'm on Corellia. That's Coronet City." She points down to the valley and watches as Ben's gaze follows.

"Huh," he says. "I've never seen it from here."

"Have you ever been here?" _Did Han ever take you_ is the question she wants to ask, but maybe he's not ready to hear it.

"Once, when I was fifteen. Not long before my parents sent me away to train with Luke. We didn't hang out here long; Han didn't have any other family. That's why he took the name Solo."

Rey nearly laughs at that. It's a good reason to choose a name. Ironically, if she took that name, it would be because she _wasn't_ alone.

As if knowing where her thoughts are going, Ben smiles at her. "If you're about to tell me I'm not alone," she says, "don't. I'm still angry that you sacrificed yourself for me again."

He huffs, the smile dropping from his face. "I wasn't trying to do that," he mutters. "I think we have the power to bring each other back together, so that we're not split like this." He reaches out to cup her cheek. "This is not how we're meant to be," he murmurs.

Damn it all, he's making her cry. "No," she says, placing her hand over his. It feels staticky. Maybe Force ghosts run on electricity as well as the Force. "It’s not. So how do we stop it?"

"There must be an answer somewhere," he says, stepping closer to her. If he were alive, she'd be able to feel the heat from his body. That almost makes it worse. "Unfortunately, Force dyads are rare enough that there probably isn't a lot of documentation on them."

One of her hands is still holding his where it's resting on her cheek, but the other tugs at the hem of his shirt. It's bizarre that they leave their clothes behind when they become one with the Force, and yet when he appears, he looks exactly as he did the last time he died.

It's also a shame, because she really wants to see him naked.

"Where should we start looking?" she asks.

He smiles at that. _We_. Even if his Force ghost is unable to constantly follow her around the galaxy, he's still a part of this. "I'd say we could ask a Force ghost, but none of them are particularly inclined to help me with this. It's all 'I hate sand' this and 'the sacred Jedi texts' that."

Rey snorts. Luke, she guesses. "I could probably see if there's anything left on Ahch-To besides the wreck of your TIE Silencer."

"So that's what you did with it,” he says. “I was wondering."

"Sorry."

He shrugs, dropping his hand from her cheek. "It's not like I have a need for it now, anyway."

"Still, I probably shouldn't have stolen your ship, left you stranded on the wreckage of a Death Star, and then burned your ship to the ground in a fit of panic." _I almost killed you,_ she thinks. It had been a whirlwind of emotions. But then again, everything about them has always been a whirlwind of emotions.

It will be nice to finally have the time to relax together.

And now she's fantasizing about him. Not the usual sexual fantasies she has, but of just curling up with him and relaxing. Maybe watching a holofilm. She's heard that that's a nice date activity. Relationship goals.

He shrugs as if he's not bothered at all by the fact that she nearly killed him. "It's fine," he says. "I got out of there in the end." When she doesn't respond, he says, "Ahch-To, you were saying?"

"Do you have any other suggestions?" She debates telling him how badly she needs him to be alive with her, but she's not sure he needs to hear that right now. Besides, she's certain it's evident in the way she looks at him. It's certainly evident in the way he looks at her.

"I'm not sure," he admits. "Dagobah has a history of being an entirely Force-sensitive planet, not unlike Ahch-To. The Empire cleaned out the archives of the old Jedi Temple on Coruscant, otherwise I'd suggest we look there."

"What did the Empire do with their archives? You once suggested you had access to their information, if I recall correctly." The map. Was that only a year ago? It seems like a lifetime has passed since then.

Stars, what a way to meet your future partner.

Ben's blue-tinted cheeks darken, which she takes to mean he's blushing. She assumes he's thinking the same thing she is. "I'm not sure that going back to the remnants of the First Order is a viable option."

He's right. "So, Ahch-To, then. Or Dagobah?" She's never been there. Unlike Ahch-To, she wouldn't know where to start on that planet. "Or how about we try one more time? Right here, right now." She's itching to kiss him again, even if it's going to involve the weird staticky sensation that comes with touching a Force ghost. She's not being at all subtle about it; she's mere centimeters away from him now. If he were alive, she might be able to feel his breath fanning her face.

"Are you suggesting we make out until you use the power of our Force dyad to bring me back to life?" He's clearly amused, but he's cupping her face in his palms, so he's not going to argue against the idea.

"Shut up and kiss me, Ben."

And he does.

It's not like she's had a lot of practice with this, but he doesn't seem to mind. She's a little distracted; part of her wants to focus on the way one of his hands has slid back to tangle in her hair, which is only half-pulled back now, but she's not wasting this opportunity while she has him. Her own experience being a Force ghost has taught her that it's not so easy to navigate her way back to him, especially because time means nothing there; if he disappears now, there's a chance she might not see him again for years, and she can't have that. She doesn't think he'd be happy knowing she spent her life chasing him around the galaxy, but she's not going to give up until he's back in the land of the living by her side.

She places one hand on his heart and pushes the energy that flows between them, even in death. It's a delicate balance; it's not a quick and easy fix, but too much and she'll end up—

"Fuck," Ben says as Rey winks out of existence, leaving him alive and naked and on the top of a mountain. "Not again."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> me, writing this: "are there mountains on corellia? should i check wookieepedia? does canon even matter anymore?"  
> also me, writing this: *pulls up the entry for corellia on wookieepedia*


	4. Dagobah

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> it's been a minute, so let's recap: rey tried to bring ben back on tatooine and became a force ghost in his place. ben tried to bring rey back on jakku and became a force ghost in her place. rey tried to bring ben back (again) on corellia and is now a force ghost.
> 
> there has been a lot of chaos in my personal life and the only fic things i've had time for are my contributions to the [Reylo Charity Anthology](https://twitter.com/reylocharity/status/1227621927826620418?s=20) and the [RFFA Valentine's Day 2020 exchange](https://reylofanfictionanthology.tumblr.com/tagged/for-one-is-both-and-both-are-one-in-love). i am shamelessly plugging both of those projects because they are incredible (and as of the time of this posting, there's still one more day to get a copy of the RCA 2020 anthology!).
> 
> hopefully, the chaos is calming down and i will be able to get back in the swing of things so that i can update this regularly again. i have the whole thing planned out; it's just a matter of having the time to sit down and write it!

Rey may have been planning on returning to Ahch-To in search of answers, but Ben decides to go to Dagobah instead.

He’s been there before. Once. Years ago, not long after he fled Luke's temple to train under Snoke. Needless to say, it wasn't exactly the best experience. But, as he's proven multiple times now, he'll do anything to save Rey.

Including wandering around fucking Dagobah, looking for answers.

If this doesn't work, he'll give breaking into the old Jedi Temple on Coruscant a try. He's hoping to avoid going anywhere crowded, partially because he doesn't want to risk being recognized, but mostly because if Rey un-Force ghosts in public, everyone is going to see a naked woman suddenly appear out of nowhere.

Well. Anyone Force-sensitive might see the Force ghost anyway. Ben's not sure if non-Force-sensitives can see Force ghosts, and it's not like he'll know from personal experience. Regardless, there's the risk of Rey materializing completely naked in the middle of Coruscant, and that's probably not going to go down well. As much as Ben would love to see her naked, he doesn't want an audience when it finally happens.

Making his way down off of the mountain top on Corellia while naked hadn't been pleasant. At least Rey had thought to bring a cape. He'd like to think it's because she knew she'd be able to draw him out and she didn't want him to have to wander around naked.

It takes him a lot longer to get to Dagobah than he would like, mostly because Rey’s ship is in need of maintenance and the credits he finds stored among her things aren’t enough to cover all of the parts. He’s trying to be a better person, but the temptation to use the Jedi Mind Trick to get the things he needs is too strong to resist, especially when it would take time to find a paying job. That’s time he can’t spare from his quest to find Rey.

It’s going to take him a little while to do the repairs himself, though. He knows enough about ship maintenance that he knows how to do things like replace the engine coolant and double-check that the life support system is in perfect order, but fixing the horizontal booster will take a little longer. The manual labor is just distracting enough that it allows him time to process the past few days.

The past few _months_ , actually, now that he thinks about it. It feels like only a week or two has passed since he first found Exegol. Which it has, in terms of days he’s been alive for. Being a Force ghost has really messed with his sense of time. It makes him even more impatient to bring Rey back to life, because he’s not sure he’ll survive without completely losing his mind if he can’t find her again in the Force. Being together while one of them is a Force ghost helps alleviate the agony of having a soul split in half, but so far those moments have been rather fleeting in their rush to both come back to life properly.

He can’t say if he wants to drag the next one out so that they have more time together in case things go wrong again, or if he wants to barrel on through anyway.

The repairs only take a week, and then he’s rushing off, throwing half-remembered coordinates into the ship’s nav system without bothering to make sure they’ll bring him to the right place. Now that he’s no longer distracted by ship maintenance, he’s anxious, pacing around the small ship as he tries to come up with a better plan than “Go to Dagobah and see what happens.”

"Come on, Rey," he murmurs to himself as he lands her ship somewhere reasonably safe. He's a talented pilot, but this planet is...unpredictable. But it's green and wet and _alive_ in a way that Tatooine and Jakku are not, and that alone might make it a tempting place for Rey to appear. Once they're both alive and out of the Force netherworld, he's going to take her on a trip around the galaxy, starting with Naboo. He's never been to Padme's homeworld, but he's always wanted to go. He has no interest in hunting down any distant relatives, but he'd still like to see the place his grandparents fell in love.

Would he be coming on too strong if he brought Rey to the exact place his grandparents had gotten married?

Probably, but that's not enough to stop him. She knows he's always been relentless when it comes to her. He just wants to give her anything and everything she wants, and he's not going to apologize for that.

Within moments of disembarking from the ship, he realizes that there are echoes on Dagobah. It's unclear if they actually are echoes in the Force, or if it's just Ben's memories coming to the surface. Everything has always been so jumbled for him, and there are large chunks of time missing from his memory. He's not in any rush to go poking around there; if he forgot, there's probably a reason for that. But he's catching glimpses and snippets of conversation: first of his own experiences, then of a young Luke Skywalker and a little green creature that Ben recognizes as Master Yoda.

"Do or do not, there is no try," the tiny Jedi master says. Ben's not entirely certain he agrees with that advice; he's spent his entire life trying to be good or bad, trying to force himself to fit into others' expectations of him.

Rey's expectations of him have been...not great. To be fair, he _did_ knock her out and kidnap her upon their first meeting. And she did come around to him eventually, so along the way he must have done something right.

Ben traipses through the swampy forest, wishing he'd thought to buy camping equipment. He's not going to be able to travel too far from the ship without a way to protect himself from the rain while he sleeps, but there aren't a lot of places around here that are safe for ships to land. There's another glimpse, another echo in the Force of an X-wing sinking into the swamp, and he grimaces. He's powerful enough to pull Rey's ship out using the Force if need be, but he'd rather it not get to that point.

He reaches out with his mind, but he can't find anything. The planet is like white noise, too steeped in the Force to make out anything specific. He's not really wandering in any specific direction, so he's surprised when his feet bring him to the ruins of the cave.

Stars, he hates this fucking planet.

“Not funny, Force,” he mutters, glaring at the empty pit that used to be a cave. He continues glaring for a few more minutes before turning and stomping back towards the ship.

Dagobah is hot, humid, and swampy. Some part of his brain is glad; he’d hate for Rey to freeze once she materializes and he brings her back to full, corporeal life without condemning himself back to Force ghost-ness in the process. Because that _is_ going to happen. There is no other option. He’s not going to be able to rest until he no longer feels like a part of himself has been ripped out, leaving a wound that will never heal. 

He’s not ready to wander around the swamps of Dagobah aimlessly. He doesn’t want to wind up wandering to the cave again, but he can’t just sit here and do nothing. 

So he stands in the cabin of the ship, looking around. He’s spent most of the last couple of weeks here. Even though he’s dying to know about Rey’s life, he doesn’t want to go through her things without her permission. There’s still some lingering guilt over having kidnapped her and invaded her mind, enough so that he’d rather listen to her tell him about herself. 

He can see it now, clear enough that he wants it to be a vision even though he knows it’s just a fantasy: the two of them traveling through the galaxy, learning more about each other and sharing good experiences, for once. 

(Clothing will be optional.)

Ben shakes his head. There’s no sense in wasting away fantasizing about the way things could be when he could be working to change things as they are right now. 

He’d bought (okay, fine, _stole_ ) the parts he needed for ship repairs before he left Corellia, but he only did the bare minimum of repairs to get the ship in safe enough condition to make it to Dagobah, figuring that he and Rey could fix it together once he pulled her back to life. Now he’s grateful for that; it gives him something to do rather than mope about current circumstances. Besides, Rey will probably appreciate having a ship in full working order.

The manual labor feels good. He likes feeling like he’s doing something to move things in the right direction again. The repairs and tune-up is going to take at least a few days, which is fine, because as of right now, he’s not leaving this planet alone. He can learn how to hunt and cook one of the non-sentient creatures that lives here, assuming there are no off-the-grid civilizations living on this planet. Ben is nothing if not stubborn. 

As the days go by, he starts to question the entire plan. Maybe Dagobah, even with its planet-wise force-sensitivity, isn’t the right place for him to be. And whenever he decides to venture away from the ship, his feet always lead him back to that damn cave. 

* * *

Three weeks have passed, and he’s out of ways to clean or repair the ship. He’s also running low on rations, and he’s feeling more apprehensive about the plan to kill and eat something local than he was when he got here. 

Where is Rey? What else does he need to do to draw her out?

Those questions are playing on repeat in his head as he lays under the belly of the ship, stalling on a modification he’s making to the ship. There’s only so much he can do to stall it, however, and he crawls out from under the ship to see Rey’s Force ghost looking at him with a rather starry-eyed expression. He’s so relieved to see her that he almost forgets that he’s shirtless (hey, Dagobah is _hot_ ) and covered in sweat, mud, and engine grease. _Well,_ he thinks, trying to wipe his (filthy) hands on his (also filthy) trousers, _that explains Rey’s expression._ “We did it again on Corellia,” he says, nodding at her blue-tinged appearance.

“Sorry.” She actually does sound apologetic this time, too. “I thought I had it.”

He sighs, then sits down on a slightly less muddy part of the ship’s ramp. “Me, too,” he admits.

He watches as she walks over and sits down next to him, sitting close enough that he can feel that strange staticky feeling when they brush up against each other. It’s just his bare skin against Rey’s ectoplasmic confines, but it’s still marginally comforting that she hasn’t gone for good. They sit there in silence for a moment. Ben's not sure what to say that won't come out sounding like he's whining about their current situation. He wouldn't be saying anything Rey isn't already thinking, and he'd rather spend their time together in other ways.

Without warning, Rey leans over and buries her face in his neck. The movement is so sudden that it makes Ben jump. "Rey, what—"

She sighs, then rests her forehead on his collarbone. "Force ghosts can't smell," she mumbles.

"You were trying...to smell me?" He's not sure what to make of that, especially given how gross he is at the moment. It's probably for the best that she can't smell him right now, actually.

"I was curious," she says. "Don't you want to know the limits of this? It seems like something you'd want to study."

"I might be more interested in studying it if you weren't the Force ghost in question," he says dryly.

"Hmm." She hasn't moved, so Ben puts an arm around her shoulders. "Why aren't you wearing a shirt? Not that I'm complaining, of course," she's quick to add.

The sheer curiosity in her tone makes him blush. "It's hot, and I'm fixing up your ship for lack of anything better to do. Which is no longer an issue." He shrugs his shoulder gently to emphasize his point.

"It's a good look on you," she says, pulling just far enough away from him that she can give him an appreciative look-over. Then, while he's still trying to formulate a response to that, she says, "Can I touch you?"

"Yes." Ben's not proud enough to feel embarrassed by how quickly the word leaves his mouth.

"Hmm." She shifts her weight, arranging herself so that she's perched on his knees. The staticky feeling is starting to become uncomfortable, but there's no way Ben is going to deny her this. He's never been prone to vanity—his life as a Jedi apprentice and then as a Knight of Ren didn't leave much room for it—but the way Rey is looking at him and touching him right now is making him feel good, like he might actually deserve this after all.

Rey's touches are tentative. Her fingers trace a path along his collarbone and down his arm, then stop when they reach his hand to twine her fingers with his. "Is this okay?" she asks, pressing a quick kiss to the back of his hand.

"Yes," he whispers.

She smiles, kisses his hand again, and drops it in favor of tracing her fingers along his sternum. "So much muscle," she murmurs appreciatively.

He's not sure how to respond to that, but he doesn't want her to stop touching him. “Think it’ll work this time?” she murmurs, resting her hand over his racing heart.

“We could just—” He almost says _stay like this for a while_ , but that implies that he thinks they’re doomed.

Rey must pick up on that, because her face falls. “Do you really think we’re going to be stuck like this forever?”

“I don’t think I’ll survive without you.” It’s more melodramatic than she probably wants to hear right now, but it’s the truth.

“Not an option,” she replies firmly. “We’re going to solve this. Maybe if we both work together to balance the energy instead of one of us fighting to bring the other back, we’ll be able to figure it out.”

She has a point. “How do you want to do that?” he asks.

“We can figure out a balance,” she says. “We could meditate on it.”

Ben’s not sure how easy it will be to find inner peace with his Force ghost girlfriend perched on his lap, but he refuses to let her go. Besides, they have to be touching in order for Force healing to work.

Despite the fact that one of them is alive and the other is not, they’re still able to sink into their mental link now that they’re both present and focusing on it. It’s reassuring to know that Rey feels just as jittery as Ben does. So much hangs on this moment. It’s nice to not be alone in that anxiety.

Rey’s hand is still resting on his heart. He rests his hand on top of it, twining their fingers together. He can feel the power building between them now, more balanced now that they’re working together. “It’s working,” he murmurs. “Rey, we’re finally—” He’s about to say _going to be together_ , but they stumble before he can finish the thought, leaving Rey alone and naked on Dagobah, screaming wordlessly into the swap surrounding her.

_Not. Fucking. Again._


	5. Chandrila

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i have not forgotten about this fic; i have just been pressed for time/energy to work on this lately!

The days that follow Dagobah are even worse than the ones following Exegol. To have come so close to having Ben alive and by her side only to have it ripped away leaves Rey in such a state of despair that she’s not even aware of the passage of time. It’s not until she’s landing in Hanna City that she realizes she’s returned to Chandrila, where the rest of her friends are moving on with their post-war lives.

Finn and Rose are waiting at the spaceport when Rey disembarks from her ship. She supposes that someone must have commed them to let her know she’s back on Chandrila, but she’s not sure who. It may even have been her. Who cares? All she knows is that she’s lost Ben again, and she doesn’t know what else to do to bring him back.

Finn takes one look at her and immediately pulls her into a hug. “What happened on Tatooine?” he asks. “You’ve been gone for nearly three months.”

Rey bursts into tears for the first time since she and Ben swapped places on Dagobah.

It takes some time, but Finn and Rose managed to coax the story out of Rey eventually. The entire story, too; she’s never told them exactly what happened on Exegol or the events leading up to it.

“I share a soul with Ben Solo, and now he’s gone” goes surprisingly well. Finn seems less surprised by this than Rey had expected, and Rose, who never met Ben and only knows him by reputation, merely hands Rey another tissue.

“Have you thought about seeing a therapist?” Rose asks. Rey’s not sure what that is; when she asks, Rose explains that it might be good for her to speak to a neutral third party who is trained to help her work through her trauma.

“Someone who can teach me about the Force?” She tries to ignore the pang she feels from the memory of someone offering to teach her the ways of the Force in a snowy forest.

“I don’t think so,” Rose says. “I’m sorry. But it still might help to talk to someone about this.”

Rey’s not certain what good it will do to talk to someone who doesn’t understand the Force, but with no better ideas, she agrees to make an appointment to speak to someone. She doesn’t miss the relieved looks that Finn and Rose exchange. Rather than continue talking through her own wreck of emotions, she asks them what they’ve been doing while she was running around the galaxy looking for answers.

They’ve gotten back together, as it turns out. Finn, along with Jannah and her crew, have been in charge of what’s left of the First Order stormtroopers. Their own experiences escaping the First Order lend them plenty of expertise. “It’s not an easy process,” Finn explains, “nor are we going to fix everything overnight. But we have to start somewhere, right?”

Rose, on the other hand, is back to mechanical work. “This is where I’m happiest,” she tells Rey. “Running a government? No thanks.”

She also informs Rey that she’s more than welcome to join her. “That is, if you need a break from all of your Force stuff.” She shoots Finn a look that Rey doesn’t quite understand, but she figures she can ask him about that later.

“Actually, a break from all of my ‘Force stuff’ would be nice,” Rey says. She’s not going to completely close herself off from it, but she needs to figure out where to look for answers next.

Tatooine, Jakku, Corellia, and Dagobah. None of them have provided any answers yet. She supposes she could go to Ahch-To, but something tells her that she’ll have no more luck there than anywhere else.

It occurs to Rey much later as she’s unlocking her apartment that Chandrila may have answers. It’s Ben’s homeworld, after all. And being the son of famous war heroes must mean that there are old holos and records of his childhood.

There’s a strange pang of jealousy when she thinks about the fact that the closest Ben could come to her history was the ruins of an old AT-AT walker on Jakku. There are no holos of Rey’s childhood anywhere to be found. She barely remembers what she’d looked like as a child; mirrors weren’t a common sight on Jakku, and the ones she did manage to find were usually shattered into pieces in the ruins of old ships.

It is what it is, she tells herself. There’s no changing the past. Letting it die isn’t the answer, but the only thing she has control over is the present.

Rey settles back into her pre-Tatooine routine as best as she can. She picks up work at Rose’s garage in between her solitary meditation and Force training, and Rose, Finn, and Poe all make it a point to seek Rey out and invite her to spend time with them.

“Let me show you how to cook traditional Haysian food,” Rose says one day. “I used to do it with Paige whenever we could find the ingredients. I miss cooking with a friend.”

Poe is happy to have the resident Jedi-slash-ace pilot back. “Rey, you _have_ to check out the new flight simulators the New Republic navy has. They’re incredible. You have to see it to believe it.”

Rey accepts both invitations half-heartedly. It keeps her busy, and staying busy allows her to push her other feelings to the back of her mind.

Finn has been a little more reserved than the other two. He finally comes clean with Rey when the two of them go out to dinner about a week after her return. “So, listen,” he begins. “I wasn’t sure how to tell you this while all of...well, _you know_ was happening.”

She realizes that she’s finally about to hear the secret Finn has been keeping from her since before Pasaana. “What is it?” she asks, prompting him to continue.

He sighs. “I’m Force-sensitive.”

Rey’s first thought is _Did Ben know when you fought on Starkiller Base?_ But no, now is not the time to go down that road. “Why did you think you had to hide that from me?” she asks Finn gently.

“You always seemed like you were on another plane, and I wasn’t sure how to intrude,” he replies. “Besides, I was so busy with my own duties during the war, and I didn’t want to cut into your training time with General Organa.”

She’s torn between upset that he didn’t feel comfortable disclosing this before and appreciation that he gave her space to focus on training with Leia. “Have you tried any training in the Force since then?”

“Not really,” he admits, looking down at his bowl of nerf stew. “I’m not sure where to start. I’m not anywhere as powerful as you are.”

“Are you saying you want to learn?” She hasn’t considered taking on students, but she thinks she’d enjoy teaching Finn. Maybe she’ll deepen her understanding of the Force if she teaches someone else.

He looks back up at her. “Are you open to it?”

Rey nods. The smile on Finn’s face sparks the first joy she’s felt in a long time.

In between training Finn and fixing up New Republic ships with Rose, Rey starts looking for information on Ben’s childhood. Poe grants her access to all of the New Republic news archives; Rey is grateful for the way he doesn’t ask any questions about what she’s looking for.

It’s easy to find information on Han and Leia, despite how chaotic the New Republic government was in the first few years after the Empire was defeated. She finds Ben’s birth announcement easily as well as articles about Han, Luke, and Leia’s work in the early days of the New Republic. There are a few photos of Leia and Han with a little dark-haired toddler, but there isn’t much after 15ABY.

It’s strange to think that he started training as a Jedi padawan the same year Rey was born. Or, at least, she _thinks_ that’s the year she was born. She’s never been certain of her actual date of birth.

In the end, it all feels useless, and she barely notices as two months pass.

* * *

By the third month, Rey has started to spend more and more time wandering around the fields outside of Hanna City.

She doesn’t feel settled in the city. Whether that’s more because she doesn’t feel settled anywhere without Ben or because she’s unused to spending so much time in a densely populated area, she isn’t certain.

What she _is_ certain of is that she is losing her mind, and she’s considering researching some grey-area Force techniques to draw Ben out. Force ghosts are solidly on the Light Side, but desperate times call for desperate measures.

Maybe not today, though. She remembered something Leia had said once about Ben’s affinity for calligraphy. Rey has never tried it, but she used to keep a sketchbook with drawings and notes. How hard can calligraphy be?

(And even if it is difficult, maybe the offer of teaching her the ways of the pen will be enough to draw Ben out. She can only hope.)

There’s one particular park a few kilometers outside of Hanna City that Rey has been drawn to. She can’t put her finger on why, but she’s learned to never say no to the voice in her head that’s an extension of the Force.

Once she arrives, she settles down with a snack, one of the ancient Jedi texts, and a brand new calligraphy set. “Alright, Ben,” she murmurs to herself as she sets up a makeshift desk in the grass. “Let’s see if this will bring you back to me.”

She starts by making lines and circles on the page, simply getting used to the weight of the pen in her hand. Eventually, the marks start to take shape, and then suddenly she realizes she’s drawn a scene that has certainly not come out of her own memory.

Is it Ben’s?

Rey sits up with a jolt, knocking her head on something that hadn’t been there previously. “What the—” she says at the same time a very familiar voice mutters, “Ow.”

She can’t turn around fast enough to see Ben peering over her shoulder, staring at the drawing. “How long have you been there?” she asks, touching his face to reassure herself that he really is there. “It’s been months. I’ve been searching for you here.”

“Months?” He looks apologetic, even though he has nothing to apologize for. Rey knows from experience what it’s like being stuck in the Force. “Where is ‘here’?” He looks up, taking in the scenery for the first time. “Oh,” he says without needing Rey to answer the question. “I know this place. I used to come here all the time as a child. My parents took me here to get out of the city on rare days that they didn’t have to work.”

That explains why Rey has been so drawn to it. “I’ve been living in Hanna City, but I always feel so unsettled there,” she says.

He gives her a confused look. “What are you doing on Chandrila?”

“Looking for answers.” He doesn’t immediately reply, so she decides to elaborate. “The New Republic is headquartered here, at least for now. And I know it’s your homeworld, so I thought that maybe I’d find more answers here.”

He shakes his head. “It’s not really my homeworld. I only lived there until I was ten.”

“I know. I did some research through the New Republic news archives.”

“What do you—oh. Right.” He looks uncomfortable. “My parents.”

She’s quick to explain herself. “I wasn’t trying to pry,” she tells him. “I was just curious. You saw my childhood on Jakku. I thought that maybe learning more about your childhood would bring answers as well.”

“And did it?”

She waves her hand at the calligraphy set. “Well, you’re here now, so I guess it did.”

He sits down, settling behind her. She leans back into him, even though it’s a little uncomfortable to feel the strange static of touching a Force ghost all along her back and arms.

Ben presses a kiss to the spot behind her ear, making her sigh. “What are you drawing?” he asks. “It looks familiar.”

“I’m not sure. I thought that maybe it was from your memory.”

“Hm.” She’s silent while he considers the sketch. “What do you think it is?”

“A library, perhaps.”

Ben has probably seen more libraries than she has. Her only exposure has been the New Republic news archives and the tree on Ahch-To. “What do you think?” she asks him.

“I agree, but it doesn’t look like any library I’ve been to.”

She sighs. “Maybe I made it up, then.”

They’re both silent for a few minutes. “So,” Rey says, pulling away so that she can turn around to look at him. “We failed again last time. What should we do differently now? I’m not leaving you behind again.”

He’s still looking at Rey’s sketch. She recognizes that expression; it’s his “trying to figure out what the hell the Force is doing” look. “What is it?” she asks.

“I think this might be the archives of the former Jedi temple on Coruscant,” he says. “Look.” He points at a shape on the floor in the drawing. “See? It’s the seal of the Jedi Order.”

Rey squints, but the shape just looks like a pile of shadows. She wasn’t _trying_ to draw anything, but maybe she was unintentionally channeling the Force. “I thought the Jedi Temple was—well.” She’s not sure of the right way to phrase it without drawing too much attention to Ben’s past.

“That one was destroyed, yes,” Ben says, eyes glued to the drawing. He doesn’t seem to be ready to fly off the handle, but he doesn’t allow the conversation to linger on that particular memory. “But the Jedi of the Old Republic had a temple on Coruscant. It’s been mostly abandoned since then. There might not be anything of use there anymore, but…” He trails off, finally looking up to flash her a smile. “You’re good at scavenging, aren’t you?”

Rey snorts. She doubts that any of the scavengers she grew up with had ever even entertained the idea that she might one day use her hard-earned skills to crawl through old Jedi archives looking for a way to bring the other half of her soul back from the dead. “You think this is a sign from the Force?”

“Why else would you be drawing someplace you’ve never been?” he asks. “It’s too much of a coincidence to be random luck.”

“That must be the answer, then. The old Jedi Temple on Coruscant.” She’s already making the calculations for how quickly she can get there. The supplies on her ship aren’t fully stocked, but it has enough food and fuel to handle the trip. It’s not a far jump from Chandrila to Coruscant; she can comm her friends on the way to let them know she’s going off-world again. “It makes sense. The Jedi must have encountered something like this over the millennia, right?”

“I should have just gone there instead of Dagobah,” he replies, shaking his head.

Something occurs to Rey. “Will you stay with me?” she asks. “As a Force ghost. Do you have to leave?” Every time they’ve met like this, they’ve tried to bring each other back from the dead. There’s no knowing what the other limits of this are. It’s not like there’s a how-to guide for being a Force ghost.

“I never want to leave your side,” Ben says. He really means it, too; even with the blue tint to his features, she can see the determination in his eyes.

_He’s so extra,_ she thinks fondly. “We’re actually going to do it. We’re going to figure this out.” She’s so overcome with excitement that she doesn’t think twice about tackling Ben to the ground, kissing his blue, staticky skin wherever her lips can reach.

“Rey, what—” He doesn’t get another word out before she swallows the rest of the sentence into a kiss. He wraps his arms around her; despite the discomfort of embracing a Force ghost as a living person, she feels safe. They’re going to get through this. The end is in sight.

Unfortunately, Rey’s jubilation has the unintended side effect of pushing her life force back into Ben, and in the next breath, all that’s left is a pile of clothing lying on top of him.

“Fuck you, Force,” he says, but the words are less heated than they would have been before he and Rey had figured out where to find the answer to their dilemma:

Coruscant. The center of the galaxy. And, soon, the place where they’ll finally be together again.


	6. Coruscant

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *shows up fifteen minutes late with starbucks* hey there. i promise i haven't abandoned this. writer's block is weird.
> 
> It’s been a minute, so here’s a recap:
> 
> Rey was pissed off about the aftermath of TROS and somehow conjured Ben’s Force ghost on Tatooine, then swapped places with him accidentally. Next, Ben went to Jakku in search of answers then swapped places with Rey. After that, Rey went to Corellia and they swapped places again. Then Ben went to Dagobah; guess what happened. Finally, Rey went to Chandrila in defeat and was there for three months before swapping places with Ben again.

Ben is fairly certain that Rey didn’t mean to swap places with him again, but now that he knows what needs to be done, he’s not as frustrated. Of course, he would have preferred that they’d been able to do this together, but the only way out of the situation is to keep moving forward.

He rummages around for his clothing in Rey’s ship, mentally thanking her for being so... _scavenger_ about it. He's still curious as to what she was doing with his unwashed clothes in the period between Exegol and Tatooine, but that's hardly at the top of his priority list as he scrambles to dash off a quick _I'm headed to Coruscant for a bit, don't worry about me_ message to Rey's most recent contacts.

The three most recent message chains are from people named Finn, Poe, and Rose. The fact that Rey is in close contact with Poe Dameron is troubling, given what happened the last time Ben and Poe were in the same room together, but he hopes that she wants to introduce him to Finn and Rose once all of this Force ghost banthashit is over and done with.

He's in such a rush to get to the old Jedi Temple archives on Coruscant that he doesn't even think to check for fuel and supplies until he's already out of Chandrilan airspace. Fortunately for him, Rey's hoarding tendencies mean that he'll be able to get to Coruscant and back without a problem. And now there's nothing to do but wait.

Waiting has never been Ben's strong suit.

This time, he's spending less time trying to figure out how to draw Rey's Force ghost out and more time thinking about all of the things they'll do once they're together again. There's so many places he'd love to take her if she's willing, and he'd like to see her favorite places, too.

The result of this is that by the time Ben is cleared to land on Coruscant, he has a date idea list about a kilometer long.

Coruscant is exactly how Ben remembers it: packed, loud, and overwhelming. He's often wondered how the Jedi of the Old Republic were able to maintain their sanity being so Force-sensitive on a planet of a trillion citizens. Nothing in anything he'd studied both as a student of Luke and of Snoke has ever really explained that.

But then again, he's always known that his Force-sensitivity far exceeds most of his peers, Rey excluded. Maybe the average Jedi could tolerate it better than Ben can.

In the six decades since it was destroyed, no one has rebuilt over the Jedi Temple. In fact, the closer Ben draws to it, the more deserted the area seems. There are echoes in the Force of the suffering and destruction that happened there, so strong that even the Force-blind denizens of the galaxy are affected by it. In a strange way, Ben is almost relieved that he's so used to feeling the kind of destruction and despair radiating from the empty structure. It makes it easier to ignore.

The echoes in the temple are so strong that he can practically see the past. He closes his eyes, drawing up his mental shields. He doesn't want to know the destruction his grandfather was responsible for. The downside of this is that it makes it more difficult for him to find his way to the old archives; he's wandering around for what feels like hours before he finally finds the room from Rey's drawing.

The nerd in him is awestruck by the sheer amount of knowledge and records that had been kept here once upon a time. Even though the library has long since been raided by scavengers and imperials, there are still plenty of books, scrolls, and datatapes left to go through.

It's easy to get distracted by how much there still is in this library. There are actual paper books written in languages Ben doesn't recognize. The scholar in him wants to be delicate and make his way slowly through all of the information and history buried here, but there's so much to go through and he's not sure where to start. The Force may have given Rey an image of this library, but her drawing didn't include an arrow pointing to the exact location of the information they need.

"Stupid Force," Ben grumbles aloud.

He has to start somewhere, so he picks a shelf at random that isn't in as much of a state of disarray as the others. It doesn't take long before he's practically hyperventilating as the size of this task hits him. He's practically looking for a needle in a haystack with nothing to go off of. Unless...

Unless he opens himself up to the Force. And the potential for the echoes of the past to haunt him.

_Well_ , he thinks, _I've put myself through worse for Rey. It can't hurt more than being thrown to the bottom of a chasm and pulling himself back out again._

He sinks down to the ground and sits in the cross-legged pose that he employed thousands of times as a padawan, learning to meditate on the Force. Learning to let go of his panicked thoughts and listen to the Force again is like slogging through waist-deep mud. After moving between the dark side and the light, and then moving between Force ghost and flesh-and-blood being, his patience for the mysterious Force that binds all living things in the galaxy together is less than optimal. 

He thinks back to that day on Exegol, listening to Rey reach out across time and space to Jedi of the past. _Be with me,_ he thinks, trying to ignore how pointless it's starting to feel. _Be with me._

At some point, he realizes that he's no longer alone. He opens his eyes to see a Force ghost staring down at him, an amused expression on his face. The scar running down the side of his face is strangely reminiscent of the one Ben had before Rey impaled, then healed him on Kef Bir. "Having fun?" the Force ghost asks.

"Who are you?" Is this someone he's supposed to recognize? It's certainly not his mother or his uncle. Unless—

The blue-tinged stranger grins at him. "For all the time you spent trying to contact me, you don't seem particularly impressed."

It takes Ben a minute to parse the words. "Grandfather?" he asks slowly.

"In the flesh." Anakin looks down at himself. "Well, sort of."

"What are you—" He cuts himself off, worried by how demanding his tone is.

"Doing here?" Anakin finishes. "I thought you might need some help."

Ben takes a deep breath. "Not that I'm ungrateful, but why you? I don't understand why you chose to manifest here, of all places."

Anakin shrugs. "We drew straws and I lost."

They drew straws? What the hell has his family been getting up to, and why wasn't he invited while he was one with the Force?

"Also," Anakin says, cutting through the ten thousand questions that have popped into Ben's head, "I felt that you deserved a nudge in the right direction. Believe me when I say that we're all rooting for you and Rey."

"Have you been spying on us?" There hasn’t been much to spy on, but he's still deeply uncomfortable with the idea of his dead relatives watching him and Rey together.

"Not exactly," his grandfather replies. "We've been watching you swap places in the Force, and we'd like to give you two a rest."

_It's about damn time,_ Ben thinks. "Have you been talking to Rey? You know, in the netherworld of the Force." He's going to be really jealous if she's been getting to spend quality time with his family.

Although that's about par for the course, come to think of it.

Before Ben can get too far down that path, Anakin shakes his head. "The two of you are in a rather unique position," he explains. "Neither of you is fully alive, but neither of you is fully dead while you're separated like this. I prefer to avoid sticking my nose into Force things, but I learned the hard way what happens when you try to cheat death. I can't stand by and watch you make the same mistake."

This is not at all how Ben had expected a conversation with his grandfather to go. "Okay, then," he says. "You lived, trained, and studied here. Where do we start?"'

* * *

With Anakin's help, Ben is able to narrow down which part of the archives to focus on. It takes a little while to get there due to Anakin's need to stop and comment on everything except that one time he brought about the end of the Jedi Order. "Did you ever hear about how I won my freedom with a podrace when I was nine?"

"You told me that story an hour ago."

"Oh. Right. Well, it's a good one."

"Uh-huh." He's scanning a shelf half-full of books, most of which have seen better days. "What am I supposed to be looking for, again?"

"You'll know it when you see it."

Ben scowls at the books in front of him. "Thanks, that's really helpful."

"It's not about the destination, it's about the—"

"Journey. I know the saying." He turns around to look at Anakin. "Can't you give me a hint?"

Anakin sighs, despite the fact that he's not actually breathing. "I would if I could, kid," he admits. "But I'm not exactly sure myself. This is the section where the Jedi kept information on Force dyads, but that's all I know."

Ben bites his tongue before retorting _Some help you are._ "There's not a lot of information here."

"There's not a lot known about Force dyads."

"Well, maybe if I figure out how to bring Rey back for good, I'll write the textbook," Ben snaps.

"Not a half-bad idea, kid."

He pores through the entire shelf, only stopping when he comes to a small, tattered, unmarked volume tucked away on the bottom corner. He almost misses it at first, but the sight of it sends chills running through him. That's either a really good sign, or a really bad one.

As with everything Force-related, it’s a coin toss. It could go either way and there’s no guaranteed way to know which way it will land for Ben.

He slowly reaches for the book, only letting his gaze flicker to Anakin once to gauge his reaction. His grandfather looks just as curious as Ben feels, which is not exactly reassuring. "It's a journal," Ben says, flipping open the cover to read the front page. The handwriting is small, cramped, and nearly impossible to understand because it's written in such an archaic version of Galactic Basic.

Anakin frowns. "I don't recognize that name" is his only reaction. Ben’s not sure why he’s disappointed by his grandfather’s remark; it’s about as helpful as all of his other commentary has been.

He flips open the journal to the first entry, then decides to find a comfortable place to sit. Despite the small size of the journal, it's going to take a while to get through. He’s only able to decipher the penmanship with difficulty and practice. If he hadn’t taken up calligraphy when he was a kid, he might not be able to understand it at all.

He falls asleep reading it, and when he wakes up, Anakin's ghost is gone. That’s okay, though. Anakin Skywalker was not what he expected. It makes him understand why people say “Never meet your heroes.”

Ben stands up, stretching in an attempt to work the kinks out from falling asleep in an uncomfortable position. It's fully dark in the temple except for his glowlamp. The daylight that had been streaming in through the windows has turned to night, making him wonder how long he's been asleep.

This is enough for now, he decides. He tucks the journal in his bag and heads back to his ship. He has the answer now. He knows what he has to do. And he knows just where he wants to do it, too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> almost done! where do you think ben's headed?


	7. Naboo

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> strap in, we're earning that M rating today.

Being one with the Force is hard to describe. Time doesn’t work the same as it does in the waking world, and Rey’s not even certain she has a body when she’s here.

The one thing she is aware of, is she’s always fighting to find a way back to Ben.

It would be cool to stop by and say hi to some of the Skywalkers (and maybe yell at some of the others), but Rey’s priority is Ben. She still hasn’t quite figured out what the trigger for manifesting is. It’s not as simple as “whenever they’re thinking about each other,” because when half of your soul is trapped on a different plane of existence, it makes it really difficult to think about much else. It’s some sort of emotional connection, presumably, given the places they’ve manifested to each other, but it’s equally likely that it could simply be a case of the Force saying “go fuck yourself.”

In any case, the next time Rey fights her way through the fog of the World Between Worlds, Ben is sitting on a grassy hill, smiling at her. “Hi,” he says, standing up to wrap his arms around her. Having been on the other end of this, she knows how weird it is to hug a Force ghost, but all she feels is the comforting pressure of Ben’s embrace.

“Hi,” she replies. “How long has it been?”

“A few weeks,” he says. “I went to Coruscant, but now I’m on Naboo.”

“Naboo?” She’s never been there herself, but she’s seen holos and she knows the significance it holds in the Skywalker family history. “Why Naboo?”

“I was waiting for you.”

She frowns. “Again: why Naboo? I’ve never been there before.”

“I thought you would like it,” he tells her. “It’s beautiful, especially out here in Lake Country. It’s the exact opposite of the desert, which is probably why my grandfather liked it so much.”

Without a proper body, she has no beating heart and therefore cannot blush, but she’s sure Ben can tell what she’s thinking. “It’s lovely,” she says, turning away from him to look at the planet around them. “Is that water?”

He chuckles. “Well, they do call it the _Lake_ Country,” he says, taking her hand.

She’s glad he’s here because it means that he brought her here, in a roundabout way, but she’s not sure what he’s up to.

“And,” he adds, taking her other hand and pulling her close, “I think I found a way to free us from this cursed situation.”

If she had a heart, it would absolutely be racing right now. “Really?” she asks, hardly daring to believe it.

“I went to Coruscant so that I could go through the remains of the archives from the old Jedi Temple,” he explains, “and I found a journal containing entries from a pair of Force-sensitives who were part of a Force dyad like us. Not exactly like us, mind you,” he adds, a faint hint of pink staining his cheeks and ears. “I mean, I doubt one of them kidnapped the other, and there’s no mention of a war, so—”

“Ben,” she says, holding up a finger to his lips. Stars, she wants to kiss him, but her need to hear what he has to say is stronger than her desire to feel his lips on hers again. She’s willing to be at least a little patient if the end result is both of them being alive together. “What do we have to do?”

He sort of...falters, for lack of better word. “Uh, so here’s the thing,” he says, sounding far less self-assured than he did a moment ago. “I promise this is completely serious and not just a ploy to get into your leggings, but I think we need to, um. Have sex.”

If she wasn’t so busy scrambling for a coherent response to that, she’d appreciate how cute he looks when he’s being shy like this. “You think that’s possible, even like this?” she finally asks.

“We can touch, can’t we?” he points out, cupping her cheek for emphasis. “And whenever one of us comes back to live, we come back naked.” He pauses. “I think the Force is a bit of a voyeur.”

She doesn’t disagree with that. “I am very willing to try if you are,” she says, pulling him in for a kiss. “I’ve never done this before, alive or dead, so I might not be very good at it at first.”

“I find that hard to believe. You’re good at everything you do.” The thing is, he’s not just saying that to placate her. He actually means it. The sincerity in his tone melts her non-existent heart, and she kisses him without another word.

Kissing while standing up is fun, but she thinks it would be a little easier if they were both on the ground. “You mean, right here?” Ben asks as the thought flows from her brain to his. She can practically hear him think _Sex in a meadow could be romantic, I suppose,_ which makes her grin.

“You’re such a nerd,” she teases, kissing him again.

She’s missing half of the senses that come with inhabiting a physical body, but the way Ben’s kissing her gets through all of that. Without another word, she pushes him gently until he’s laying on the ground of the meadow with Rey on top of him. The grass feels like a cushion under her knees and there’s no one around to bother them, so she’s more than happy to get it on out here. The sun is bright and warm and beautiful and she’s going to fight tooth and nail to be together with Ben.

They learn through practical experience that it is possible to remove a Force ghost’s clothing, and it doesn’t disappear into some other plane of existence once it’s no longer on a Force ghost body. “That’s really weird,” she says, looking at the blue-tinted discarded shirt.

“I’m grateful for it, personally,” Ben says, his fingers tracing over her skin like he’s trying to map her. “I’d hate to run the risk of seeing a naked Force ghost—other than you, of course—considering how many of my relatives are one with the Force.” Something about the way he says it makes her wonder if she missed something, but she doubts he wants to discuss his family right now. She doesn’t, either, for that matter.

Ben’s touches are gentle, and he shows no discomfort that accompanies close contact with a Force ghost, as they both know. Rey, likewise, doesn’t hesitate to explore his body, but she doesn’t want to seem frenzied. If this works—and it _will_ work; they’re two of the stubbornest, most powerful Force-sensitives to ever walk the galaxy—they’ll have all the time in the world after this, and they’ll be able to take a month-long sex vacation if they want.

It’s not until they’re both down to their underwear that it occurs to Rey to ask exactly what they’re supposed to do, according to this journal. “I mean, I know the basics of sex. I’ve seen holoporn. But were there specific instructions? Like, certain sex acts or positions to try?”

“In the tradition of the old Jedi Order, it was vague and the language was so archaic that I could barely understand it, but it said that ‘expressing emotions with the transportation of fluid’ would bind us together,” he explains in between kisses. “I figured we’d just see what happens and go from there.”

It’s as good an idea as any, she supposes.

Soon, she’s naked and lying on her back while Ben plies her body with kisses. She’s relieved to know that despite the lack of a beating heart, her Force ghost body is still capable of some typical biological functions. It would probably ruin the moment if they had to go find lube. She knows for a fact that she doesn’t have any stocked on her ship, although there is the possibility that Ben thought to prepare for this situation…

Well, that’s a thought that’s going to keep her up at night.

“Hold on,” she says, nudging so that they’ve returned to their previous position. “Do you think we need to worry about birth control?”

He stops to think about that. “The Force is capable of many strange and wondrous things. I don't think it’s capable of creating a Force-human hybrid.”

“Point taken.”

They soon discover that they don't need penetration to feel good. The simple act of getting naked and grinding up against each other does wonders. She’s sure that someday far in the future, they’ll document the many things they’ve discovered about Force ghosts, but the discovery of Force ghost sex is something she’d like to keep between them.

“I love you,” Rey remembers to gasp as she nears the edge. “You said expressing emotions with the transportation of fluid, right?”

“I—what?” Apparently, Ben’s so lost in this Force ghost sex adventure that he’s already forgotten the reason they’re doing this in the first place.

“To fix us,” she says, barely able to form a coherent thought. “I love—”

“Oh, right,” he says through gritted teeth, like he’s struggling to hang on. Being with Ben like this feels sublime, but she’s certain it’s not as good as sex is _supposed_ to feel, given the Force ghost thing. No doubt the sensation of having his dick rubbing up against a Force ghost is not the most comfortable thing, even if he does seem to be enjoying it. “I love you, too, Rey,” he gasps. “So, so much.”

Approximately thirty seconds later, they’re lying in a sticky, endorphin-tinged haze.

And Rey is _still a kriffing Force ghost._

She senses the exact moment Ben realizes, too, because the contentment and happiness he’d felt upon reaching their collective peak dissipates, only to be replaced by disappointment and anguish. “I’m so sorry,” he says. “I was so certain this was going to work.”

“It’s okay,” she replies, wanting to comfort him. The emotional whiplash from realizing that nothing has changed is heart-wrenching, and she feels her eyes prick with tears. “I mean, it’s not okay, the situation is objectively awful, but it’s not your fault. I can’t believe the lengths you’ve gone to for me. You _hated_ me.”

“Honestly, I’m not sure I ever really did,” he admits. His voice is thick, and when she peeks up at his face, she can see tears in his eyes as well. “I thought I did for a while there, but I think I was actually feeling a lot of other emotions and they all got masked as hate because that’s what the Dark Side feeds on.”

Something stirs in her upon learning that his feelings for her have never included hate. She wishes she could say the same, but...well, now probably isn’t the time to bring up everything that happened in the early days of their acquaintance.

What she can say for sure is this: “My feelings for you have always been complicated, too.” She can feel the tears dripping down her cheeks now. “But you came back for me. You keep coming back for me. There aren’t a lot of people who I can say that about.”

“Rey…” He rolls so that they’re facing each other, lying on their sides. He kisses the tears running down her cheeks. Part of his mind is wondering at the fact that Force ghosts can cry, but she appreciates that he’s not focused on that aspect of this scenario right now.

In fact, he’s crying, too. “You’ve gone to such lengths for me, too. And I—” A tear rolls from his cheek onto hers, and in that moment, everything goes dark.

She comes to with Ben hovering over her, astonishment clear on his features. She’s definitely still naked, and she thinks he might be, too. But this feels different than it did a moment ago.

“We did it,” Ben whispers at the exact moment Rey comes to the same realization. “All we needed to do was cry on each other a bit.”

“The sex bit was an excellent experiment, though,” she says, beaming up at him. “In fact, I think we should go back to the ship and try it again now that neither of us is a Force ghost.”

* * *

They take their time on Naboo. Ben is more than happy to spend a few weeks in relative isolation, and Rey has shown no rush to rejoin her friends on Chandrila. They take their time exploring Naboo in between all of the...well, the more _carnal_ pursuits.

“I’m running out of ways to say how beautiful this place is,” Rey says a couple of weeks after they fix the problem the Force damned them with. “I understand why your grandparents loved it here so much.”

They’re sitting on the bank of a lake, shoes kicked off so that their feet can dangle in the water. Ben tried to teach Rey how to swim a few days ago, but she’s still a mix of terrified and amazed by the concept of a lake. He finds it adorable that this woman who has faced down a Sith lord is freaked out by a tranquil body of water, but he’s certainly not going to tell her that.

“I don’t know much about them,” Ben says. “My parents only talked about my mother’s adoptive parents. My father had no relationship with his, and my mother and Luke tried to hide the truth about their father for most of my life.” He pauses before continuing. “I met him when I was on Coruscant, searching for answers.”

He and Rey have talked a little bit about what happened during the gaps where the other was a Force ghost, but this is the first time he’s mentioned Anakin. “You did?” she asks, blinking in surprise.

Ben nods. “He claimed the Skywalkers drew straws to figure out who had to come talk to me, then he claimed that the rest of the family was ‘rooting for us.’”

“Did you ever see any of your relatives when you were...you know?” The question is quiet. They haven’t really talked about their experiences in the World Between Worlds, mostly because they’d both rather not think about it.

He shakes his head. “No, they never bothered to find me. Or maybe it’s not possible to consciously find someone, you have to wait for the Force to decide it wants to throw you a bone.”

“Kriffing Force.”

“Indeed.”

There’s silence after that, the content silence of two people who don’t need to fill the space between them with empty words. “Did you ever think it would end like this?” Ben asks eventually.

“You and me, sitting beside a lake on Naboo after winning a war and dragging each other back to life multiple times? Kriff, no.”

That’s not quite what he was referring to. Ben still can’t believe he kidnapped and interrogated the woman who would turn out to be his literal soulmate the first time they met. The thought spills from his mind into hers involuntarily, but any panic he’d started to feel at the thought of making her feel uncomfortable is banished at the way she laughs. “Oh, Ben,” she says, taking her feet out of the water so that she can pull herself into his lap. “I love you, but you make a terrible first impression sometimes.”

“Don’t remind me,” he mutters, wrapping his arms around her. She’s starting to look a little pink from the sun; he can feel a sunburn growing on his skin as well. After living in space for years, spending this much time planetside has been strange. In a good way, though.

“We’ll have to work on it,” she adds, wrapping her arms around his neck. “We can’t stay on Naboo forever. We have an entire galaxy to help rebuild, and I want you to meet my friends.”

It doesn’t seem like a good time to point out that he’s already met the former stormtrooper Finn and Poe Dameron. “You do?”

She nods. “Of course I do. I mean, I don’t have many friends. Most of the Resistance was freaked out about the Jedi thing. But with the ones I do have, it would mean a lot to me if they met you.”

“You’re not worried about explaining this situation to anyone?” he says. “I don’t want to have to lie about my identity. My parents did that with Darth Vader, and it backfired horribly.”

Rey seems completely unconcerned by the idea of having to explain why Ben Solo, formerly known as Kylo Ren, is alive and well. She’s started planting soft, slow kisses along the side of his neck, and _oh_ that is distracting. “I have faith that we’ll figure it out,” she whispers in his ear. “Together, you and I can do anything, yeah?”

Ben had never, ever thought he’d get to a point in his life where he actually felt like someone wanted him to stick around. But when Rey says _together_ , his heart soars so high that he’s surprised they’re not literally floating. “Together,” he replies, tilting her chin up with one finger so that he can kiss her.

_We’re not alone,_ they promise each other.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *gets up on soapbox* repeat after me: penetrative sex is not the only valid form of sex!
> 
> if you've stuck with me despite the unexpected hiatus, thank you. this wrestled with me for a while, but i did finish in the end. hooray! and if you liked this, i've written other star wars fics, including a number of canonverse (all canon-divergent in a post-TROS world) ones.

**Author's Note:**

> i'm r_saltghoul on [twitter](https://twitter.com/r_saltghoul), and radioactivesaltghoul on [tumblr](https://radioactivesaltghoul.tumblr.com/) and [pillowfort](https://www.pillowfort.social/radioactivesaltghoul). the plan is to update this fic weekly on thursdays, but feel free to come poke me about it.


End file.
